Field Trip
by phriendly11
Summary: everything is never what it seems (post ATY)


Field Trip  
  
author: Hillary (phriendly11) aliasfanfiction@hotmail.com  
  
Spoilers: Almost Thirty Years  
  
rated: R (for language, content, ect.)  
  
classification: Vignette, angst, stream of consciousness.  
  
disclaimer: not mine. not mine, not mine, darlings. I tip my hat to JJ and co and wave in obvious admiration and reverence.  
  
summary: everything is never what it seems. (ATY aftermath fic)  
  
A/N: extensive notes at end.  
  
*field trip*  
  
and so much like everything, this story has a beginning.  
  
"There was a man who once sold oranges at a corner market on the side of Wilshire and Main. Had a little cart with tiny wheels that kind of squeaked in a tired wood sort of way. Every morning he brought in a new basket of citrus, smelling ripe and fresh and just wonderful.  
  
Every day, I walked by and thought to myself: those are lovely oranges. And I even bought a few, but only for the way they looked, so round. So perfect and round. And orange, of course – and the way they smelled, absolutely heavenly.  
  
Problem was, I don't like oranges."  
  
SILENCE. Like a heavy weight, deep within. It's been twelve days. Still enough for her to keep crying and feeling downright sorry for herself on many, many levels.  
  
Her rescue? That bit was unimportant. Enough to say: She was rescued, a complicated one where the particulars no longer mattered. It was a good day, and she lived to tell about it, but not really. Of course not really. Never really. And that monotonous theme plays in her mind and plagues her soul. Every waking moment revolves around the dichotomy of live to tell but not to tell. Lies stack up around her and build a wall, and everything is blank stare this, and blank stare that, and Will doesn't even like to look at her anymore.  
  
But it has been twelve days. Arvin Sloane called yesterday, asking if she was okay (It's been eleven days – he mutters, voice weary from despair. And she cries, and he says – Shh, shh, Sydney, I understand.  
  
Take all the time you need ).  
  
Don't play games with me, people. Don't play games.  
  
She locked herself in her bedroom and she keeps the blinds down. Francie stopped asking questions last Tuesday when she burst into tears over the faucet bursting, water flying everywhere, and his face, his face- she said it over and over.  
  
He COULD NOT BREATHE.  
  
and that part was left as final. Francie went to will's, Amy went to her boyfriends, and no one was speaking to her anymore except Arvin Sloane who thought she was in mourning over his dead wife.  
  
it's a joke, right? Laugh if you want to, Sydney Bristow is in her bedroom, locked perfectly tight and no one, no one, is allowed in. If she snapped she thinks she is entitled the break, after all:  
  
her fiancé was killed.  
  
her mother was dead, but is now alive.  
  
Will knows everything, everything, and nothing is the same  
  
Vaughn is dead. He COULD NOT BREATHE (slowmotion. I'm not kidding, you bitch. I don't care anymore. DO you understand ME? I couldn't SAVE ANY OF THEM.)  
  
the only person calling her is Arvin Sloane  
  
That was plenty of reasons.  
  
MORNING, THIRTEENTH day past the day that she stopped feeling. She had expected a gradual dull down, a slow desensitization to anything and everything, but instead it proved to be awfully quick. The measures she was prepared to take no longer frightened her, instead, there was a dull comfort where none should lay.  
  
"I'm afraid of death, and dying. I told this to my mother, once; I think I was almost 6. That was the last full year with her, you know. I can remember this moment – it was a good moment, her arms were wrapped around me – like this- no. not like that, like this - and I told her how scared I was of the unknown. She looked down at me with these eyes- they were so big and wide and open and convincing. I was spellbound by her expression alone. You know what she said to me. It's odd. She said I didn't ever need to worry about that.  
  
Isn't that a nice way of avoiding the topic entirely?"  
  
  
  
She gets out of bed that morning and thinks to herself: maybe this was all wrong.  
  
  
  
Bold thinking, she knew. If she can trace the path of her mistakes, then maybe, maybe- but the phone rang, and she forced herself to answer.  
  
"Sydney" crackling with distance, but she knows that voice, knows that voice without rational reason.  
  
"Paris." was all he said.  
  
Would you have doubted it? She didn't, and that was the point. She packed a suitcase and hid some passports and got on a plane without telling anyone (not anyone, not her father, not Arvin Sloane) and flew to Paris.  
  
It's a long flight, and half her fingernails are gone, and when the stewardess asked if she would like anything she orders vodka. It's not until after the alcohol burns down her throat that she recognizes her fallacy. How typical. (I can offer you many things, Sydney. Take my hand, daughter.) Vodka. Perfect.  
  
And this leads her to question: have I gone insane? It happened, she knew, because spies went crazy sometimes. A totally unpredictable side effect of the treacherous spy trade, you can only take so much before you break. Into a million pieces.  
  
was it real? there wasn't anything to say it wasn't. And if it were real, based on her pure believing, then so be it.  
  
DAY FOURTEEN begins over the ocean. (walls of water) Her father, recommending that she drive to the coast, from one side of the US to the other in some grand gesture that proved her free spirited ness. (Sit beside the ocean and take a moment and collect-) but the water, the water, it scared her.  
  
Danny in the bathtub. Vaughn behind glass.  
  
This continues, and she can not sleep. Even with the drinks, consumed neatly in a half hour before the stewardess explained pressurized cabins and oxygen and the fact that she was getting plastered.  
  
You think in times like these, that people, complete strangers, would be more concerned with the big picture. There is no "are you okay?" and "bad times at home?" and "would you like a tissue dearie?"  
  
These people exist in novels and television shows, not on airplanes in the early dawn of a Thursday, and she is flying to Paris on the off chance that the call she got meant something, and not some fabrication of her mind.  
  
But she smiled, sweetly, and told the woman she was fine and that the particulars of air pressure and her apparent soon to be drunkenness was really a non-issue. The woman smiled back, coldly, and stalked down an aisle to fluff a pillow or offer a non-imbibed passenger another fucking drink.  
  
And this continues for some time.  
  
PARIS IS usually lovely, not that she was particularly mindful in the other times she had visited the city of lights. City of love. City of sparkling river along beside where she was walking, and it made her nervous. (To tell you the truth, I don't want to be near the water right now)  
  
Her phone rang at noon, jarring sound that made her jump. The hotel room she was in was small, a little uncomfortable, anonymous and unassuming. It added to her nervousness, the near substandard condition of it all.  
  
A half prayer on her lips and then "Hello."  
  
"Sydney" and it WAS him, not her imagination, and he sounded very close.  
  
"Oh god," a whisper-voice, she can't stand.  
  
"I need you to help me"  
  
and that is enough reason to.  
  
"In Paris there is this little café- I can't really remember the name of it, La roe. No, no, la rue. Maybe, shit- I can't totally remember. It was quiet, not one of those busy cafes, dark and depressing and full of writers and poets disgruntled with their current doldrums. I had a cup of coffee there once, sat and watched the people until I was drinking nothing but air.  
  
It was a really beautiful moment because for a half second, I was one of them."  
  
SHE SLID into a seat inconspicuously and ordered a latte. And managed to scan the smoky room for the familiar form of her handler. She saw nothing, but felt a million things when his hand touched her shoulder.  
  
knows it's his hand by the softness of it all, the gentle half brush against her skin. It's June in Paris, it's hot and stuffy, and she has never been happier in all of her life.  
  
"Michael." That name, never used outside her head. (We gather here today to memorialize the spirit of Michael Vaughn, his caring, his charisma, his selfless devotion to his job. WE ARE ADMONISHED- that's the word they used, ADMONISHED to show any obvious emotion -)  
  
And he sat. She was speechless: his face, unbruised. Eyes, glowing unearthly green as he looked at her.  
  
"I was so worried about you, Sydney" He murmured, and she laughs, almost hysterically, over the irony of it all.  
  
DAY FOURTEEN ends at that café, exchanging glances, and the story reaches a middle. And it holds onto that moment for a very, very long time –longer even, than what actually existed, because nothing ever wants to end.  
  
Near midnight, he stood. Reached out his hand, and she took it.  
  
(I make this promise to you, Sydney. If Michael Vaughn lives then I will release him.) She asked no questions then and she will ask no questions now.  
  
a life for a life, that simple. Can you honestly say that you would have done less?  
  
Did it matter that she loved him? Loved him so very much now, now that she had lost him (We remember the day that Michael was born, and the day that he so valiantly passed away, out of this world, out of this life. – You can tell me, Sydney, tell me why you're so upset, why you are crying.)  
  
She told no one. Kept it locked within her and built a wall – half lies, half convoluted truth, and held onto the only pure thing she could believe in.  
  
Love him. Love him. Love him.  
  
It's simple – he says as they stand along the Seine. – I'm not afraid anymore.  
  
"I always thought that the day I got married there would be some glorious fanfare. Lights, music, candles that burned all night long and dances that would never end. I never thought – never- that this would be my life – our life. Never thought I'd end up the person I am today, and I think I have your father to blame for that.  
  
I thank him for every single moment of it."  
  
DAY FIFTEEN : dark skies above them, hands entwined below.  
  
"You know why they released me" Not a question, a statement.  
  
For the very first time in a long while, she was scared. Bone chilling frightened over what would come next.  
  
"I do." (an arrangement, then?)  
  
"I didn't really know if that part was true" His voice was mournful; already murdering the small vestige of hope he might have had.  
  
She had the same hopes. "I had no choice"  
  
No choice. A tiny declaration, but one nonetheless. He could not have expected more, and by his silence, she confirmed it.  
  
Steps to him in the moonlight. it's a very slight distance, and that part amazes her. (I love him. More than anything else, nothing supercedes that fact, and you won't take it from me.)  
  
Just once. Lightest of touches against his mouth with her own, and the sinking, sinking when he wraps his arms around her – she knew it would be this perfect, this whole, this real. – she falls into him completely.  
  
This is a blissful moment, and the people that pass them think that the city truly is for lovers, after all.  
  
THEY DECIDE that running would be easiest. (I won't go without you, right? I can't go without you.) His eyes like hot burning jade, they dream up new identities. He tells her to dye her hair red, and she complies, obviously.  
  
Night. Sitting in the closed up hotel room and his hands are in her hair, massaging in hair color, covering every conceivable space with sloppy gel.  
  
"I want to do it. Really" and she lets him.  
  
Later, when she stood in the whitewalled shower stall, she opened her eyes.  
  
And screamed. Loudly, echoing on tiles. Splatters of red were everywhere, red on her hands, red running in rivulets over her too white body.  
  
In a half second he was there, pulling open the shower curtain and screaming, are you alright, are you okay, Sydney, Sydney, Sydney.  
  
She does not have to explain the hair color reminding her of blood, he understands. Rinses her hair in the bathtub with excruciating patience, keeping his eyes trained on her forehead.  
  
When she is rinsed clean, dripping wet, naked, she pulls his face to hers, running her wet mouth over his lips with fierce hunger. He responds with an equal greed. She tells herself that this is the best thing, the only thing, the right now unstoppable thing.  
  
He felt her. Felt the change in her, felt when she became more demanding, more insistent.  
  
I love you, he said with his eyes, with his hands, with the way his skin felt on her own, hot and smooth and delicious.  
  
"I love you" He said when he came.  
  
"I'm not justifying anything here, not the way it happened or the way it turned out. I was young. I was stupid, and I made mistakes. Not the kind of mistakes you would think of as mistakes, these were colossal blunders. I fell in love with him. I fell in love with him – now that, that was the biggest fuck up I ever made.  
  
Period."  
  
  
  
SIXTEEN arrived inconspicuously and was the only witness to their marriage that they knew of. The other witness was a blind woman from Avignon waiting for a taxicab and pulled off the street.  
  
She laughed and she cried the moment she signed her name : Mrs. Michael Vaughn.  
  
That part- she admits, was stupid. It would have been better to have a false name, but after tonight, there would be no vestige of Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn.  
  
"Can I take a picture?" The justice of the peace asked, and they shook their heads no.  
  
No pictures, the only record in this petite chapel in the French Countryside. Now, she was Marie Gardon, married to Edward Gardon. New names. New hair.  
  
She twirled the band of gold on her finger and forgot, for just a second, what it was she was running from.  
  
But of course it came back, dark and insidious. (I need an answer, Sydney)  
  
an answer?  
  
He looked at her then, eyes heavy with doubt : "You never said you loved me"  
  
DAY  
  
SEVENTEEN  
  
and so much has already fallen apart.  
  
Dawn. Bleed of color on the horizon making the ground beneath her feet glow molten yellow.  
  
Michael Vaughn, three feet from her, reaching out his hand.  
  
he is there first when it happens – the shot, it sounded so much louder, so much closer, the bloom of red smearing across her chest when she looks down with surprise.  
  
(There's a problem)  
  
what kind of problem? what kind of problem? what kind of prob-  
  
Hard to breathe, painful gasps, but she felt it when he grabbed her hand. "This is everything" She whispered.  
  
(Call the doctor in that urgent whisper, as though she might not hear. As though she were deaf to it all, an anonymous spot on the wall, unmindful of the surroundings.  
  
and Arvin Sloane keeps on calling and calling)  
  
"I won't do it without you. I promise. I can't live without you, you know that."  
  
Did she ever really mean that? Did he? Right now, the sun rising, the blood in a slow trickle, on her hands, on his hands, on his cheek.  
  
"Go" She whispered to him. (And we memorialize him and – Weiss, and his face-. You knew what you were doing when you let him go with you, Sydney. Don't play games with me, he was in over his head. Way over his head, all because of some stupid, half-assed crush)  
  
"I won't do it without you." (If you need me.) Begging with her eyes she can't stop seeing him – face against the glass, He CAN not BREATHE!  
  
(There's no heartbeat. I can't get a pulse.)  
  
somebody help me, somebody help me, somebody help me.  
  
They were all speaking in Russian. (I think we waited too long, Irina.)  
  
sobbing. where was the sound coming from….  
  
(I never meant to…)  
  
love him. love him. love him.  
  
(You hardly knew him, Sydney. There's no way you really loved him, this is just residual guilt. Take a drive to the coast – DON'T TELL ME WHAT I FEEL IS NOT REAL…)  
  
SYDNEY.  
  
Pounding at the door. "I know they found us. Found us because we weren't careful enough, found us because we were stupid."  
  
(I'm an idiot for never saying this before-)  
  
SYDNEY, OPEN the DOOR.  
  
But she can't, because she is bleeding. And there is no door, only the smell of the sea on the water and the sand beneath her body. (walls of water). His hand, in hers, the blood, oh god, the blood.  
  
No air. There is no air.  
  
(I'm sorry, but he is dead.)  
  
He COULD NOT BREATHE. and she can't breathe now, air so tight in her lungs. "I won't do it without you, never, never, never."  
  
I love you. Love you. Never thought to say it but I do, I do.  
  
(There is no way you loved him)  
  
SYDNEY. Please, SYDNEY, open the door for me. I can hear you in there. I CAN HEAR YOU.  
  
"I never liked oranges.  
  
Since I was a kid, hated them. Something about Florida, maybe, that turned me off to them entirely. The first time I went to the ocean I was stung by a jellyfish, it hurt like hell. I was ten years old, and my mother didn't know what to do with me. She just kept crying, and crying, and when they pulled me out of the water- I almost drowned that day, I forgot to mention it, my leg swelled up and I couldn't swim and the undertow dragged me under. It was a bad day. And that morning we had eaten oranges, fresh and juicy.  
  
I couldn't ever touch them again."  
  
And that was the ending. There or then, a story between them, constructed and deconstructed a million times a day. It's a fantasy of endless possibilities, interwoven choices that made the distraction a temporary reality. But there was no change, here, and the simple fact remains: Michael Vaughn had died, and she was destined to be the survivor. No matter the manipulation, the diversion from the truth, the abstractions that played in her mind would never erase the inevitability that was made to remain.  
  
  
  
*finis*  
  
A/N: I'm sure this will be one of those pieces that will be met with the inevitable " That made no sense." Readers, I beg you to reconsider that, and email me at aliasfanfiction@hotmail.com with the basis behind your confusion and I will attempt to clear anything and everything up. There was purpose to this, one I delighted in telling and I do hope you enjoyed. If you do, I appreciate feedback, it delights me to no end.  
  
and of course, if your reaction was not of enjoyment, I'd love to hear about that, too.  
  
I'd like to thank Jessica, the lovely and talented beta reader who is out of this world. Thank you jess, thank you!  
  
and most importantly. thanks for reading. 


End file.
